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Coriolis (P98-2)

Coriolis is an Air Force Space Test Program and Office of Naval
Research (ONR) mission to demonstrate remote sensing of global wind vectors using the
Microwave Polarimetric Radiometry technique, as risk reduction for the Conical Microwave
Imager Sounder (CMIS) element of the NPOESS system, and for demonstration of more rapid
and more accurate predictions of geomagnetic disturbances to orbiting satellites through
continuous observation of solar Coronal Mass Ejections (CME).

As prime contractor, Spectrum Astro has end-to-end system responsibility, including
spacecraft design, manufacture, integration and test; experiment integration; space
vehicle verification; launch processing; and on-orbit checkout. The spacecraft is designed
to accommodate two government furnished payloads on a three year test mission:

the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) 35 kg Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI), built by the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham and the University of California at
San Diego, to monitor solar activity.

Key features of the Coriolis spacecraft design include extremely low levels of
electromagnetic interference for compatibility with the ultra-sensitive WindSat radiometer
(e.g., radiated emissions are < 6.5 dBµV/m at 6.8 GHz); and a system architecture to
support the 30 RPM yaw spin of WindSat's rotating assembly, while providing power
plus precise attitude knowledge and control.

WindSat extracts the brightness temperature data from the microwave energy emitted by
the ocean and generates data products for downlink, while SMEI gathers data from its
three optical cameras. Science data is continuously transferred to the spacecraft via a
1553B interface. Data is stored in mass memory and subsequently downlinked at up to 51.2
Mbps to a commercial X-band station with end-to-end latency as low as 4 hours. Following a
year of on-board calibration and validation, the WindSat data products will also be
continuously downlinked in real time to ground users employing small tactical terminals.

The Coriolis spacecraft was shipped to NRL in July 2001 for spacecraft level EMI
testing, WindSat experiment-to-spacecraft integration, and space vehicle environmental
testing. It was launched aboard a Titan-2(23)G
on 6 January 2003. It is still active in early 2016.

An experimental replacement for Coriolis' Windsat payload will be launched in 2017 on the ORS 6 (COWVR) mission.